There’s too much on-the-one-hand-on-the-other-hand in Jonathan Chait’s latest piece. When he finally comes to some decisions, it’s not very satisfying. I will say, though, that I agree with him that conservatism is doomed, but for a slightly different reason.
Here’s his take:
My belief, of which I obviously can’t be certain, is that conservatism as we know it is doomed. I believe this because the virulent opposition to the welfare state we see here is almost completely unique among major conservative parties across the world. In no other advanced country do leading figures of governing parties propose the denial of medical care to their citizens or take their ideological inspiration from crackpots like Ayn Rand. America’s unique brand of ideological anti-statism is historically inseparable (as I recently argued) from the legacy of slavery. Whatever form America’s polyglot majority ultimately takes, it is hard to see the basis for its attraction to an ideology sociologically rooted in white supremacy.
Our two major political parties may appear stable, but they’re really not. They are really just vehicles, like automobiles, that can carry any kind of passengers. The Democratic Party used to be the party for white segregationists and largely-Catholic ethnic minorities in the northern cities. The Republican Party used to be the party of respectable Yankees. Things have obviously flipped around quite a bit over the last fifty years. And they probably will again some day.
Conservatism is fairly wedded to the Republican Party, but the Republican Party isn’t wedded to conservatism. Whether conservatism is an ideology rooted in white supremacy or not, the Republican Party is in the business of winning elections. If being conservative wins elections, the GOP will stick with it. If being conservative loses elections, they’ll eventually get the message.
Don’t get me wrong. The Republican Party has already demonstrated that they can be slow learners. Between 1932 and 1968, the only time they were seriously competitive for any sustained period of time was when they pushed the conservative Robert Taft aside in favor of the decidedly moderate war hero Dwight Eisenhower. And the first chance they got after Nixon’s disastrous 1960 campaign, they nominated Barry Goldwater and got trounced.
I am not predicting the imminent moderation of the Republican Party, but I don’t think they will win any presidential elections, even with a tailwind at their back, until they stop being a party dominated by conservatives.
The structural disadvantages that the Republicans have in the Electoral College are only going to get worse. Chait goes through some of the reasons why: a growing minority population, more progressive views from younger voters on both social and economic issues…
In the near term, assuming that the GOP continues to pursue conservative aims like disenfranchising people of color and denying them access to health care, opposing immigration reform, and fanning the flames of white anxiety, it’s safe to assume that a growing non-white populace will translate neatly into a growing Democrat-leaning electorate.
And that means that states like New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada, and (eventually) Arizona will be out of reach for the GOP’s presidential nominee. It also means that Virginia, North Carolina, and (eventually) Georgia will start to lean into safe-blue territory. Florida won’t be a swing-state for much longer if the Republicans continue to alienate non-Cuban latinos. And even the Cubans are beginning to be a swing-vote.
The Republican Party won’t put up with this forever. For now, the financial elites are responding by trying to recruit Chris Christie or Jeb Bush, but both of those men are probably too conservative to fix the problem. Moving the party back to a Poppy Bush-level of conservatism would help, but even Poppy couldn’t win a national election right now because he couldn’t win 270 electoral votes.
It takes 270 to win, and that means the Republicans can flip Virginia and New Hampshire and Florida and Ohio and still lose. The magnitude of their disadvantage is only magnified if states like Virginia and Florida move beyond their reach.
And it really is conservatism that is to blame for this situation. If John McCain and Mitt Romney could have won the party’s nomination without turning themselves into conservative parodies of themselves, they would have had a shot.
Now, in California, some business leaders have basically given up on the GOP. The Democrats in the legislature enjoy supermajorities, so the only way to have any influence on government is to try to win over Democrats. If the GOP continues to flail in presidential elections, business leaders will set their sights on influencing the Democratic primaries more the Republican ones. And, over time, that might bring about another change of the basic alignment of the two parties.
The other possibility is that the Republican Party will be supplanted as one of the two major parties. But it has such huge legal advantages over minor parties, that’s it’s hard to see that happening. Maybe a billionaire’s revolt could fund the new party. I can envision Bloomberg and some like-minded peers of his creating a new center-right party that is fiscally conservative and decidedly un-libertarian in other areas. Maybe they would compete, at first, in states like New York that allow for candidates to run on multiple tickets at the same time. Or, they could compete in states like California, where party ID is up to the candidate, not the party.
The one thing I am fairly sure of is that the conservative capture of the Republican Party now has a shelf life. When conservatism brought victory and business-friendly laws and courts, it worked. It doesn’t work anymore.
